Impossible for Muslims to integrate in Europe: President Milos Zeman

The President of the Czech Republic has claimed that it is practically impossible for Muslims to integrate into modern Europe.

Czech President Milos Zeman said in a televised interview that integrating Muslims into Western Europe was practically impossible.

The 71 year old leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party and former prime minister of the country is known for being staunchly anti migrant.

They (children) serve as human shields for guys with iPhones to justify the wave of migrants, Zeman said in an interview with a Czech tabloid. Those hiding behind the children in my opinion do not deserve any compassion. They bring the children over in rubber dingy, knowing they might drown.

In November he made also made controversial statements accusing refugees and migrants of risking their children’s lives crossing the Mediterranean in order to use them to secure a right to remain in the EU.

And referring to the mass New Year’s Eve assaults on women in Germany and elsewhere, he added, Let them have their culture in their countries and not take it to Europe, otherwise it will end up like Cologne.

Speaking on local TV on Sunday the country’s premier said the experience of Western European countries which have ghettos and excluded localities shows that the integration of the Muslim community is practically impossible.

Late last year, Zeman called the surge in refugee numbers an organized invasion, urging young men from Iraq and Syria to take up arms against the Islamic State (IS) group instead of running away.

The Czech government has pledged to accept refugees under an EU quota scheme to place 160,000 asylum seekers throughout the bloc, despite Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka saying it is doomed to failure given refugees’ determination to head to Germany and other favored countries.

The pontiff used an address to Vatican ambassadors on Monday to urge European governments to keep welcoming migrants, while acknowledging security and other concerns over the recent mass influx of people from the Middle East, South Asia and Africa.

But few asylum seekers have chosen to stay in the largely secular Czech Republic, an EU and NATO member of 10.5 million people, with the majority heading to wealthier Germany and other western EU states.

In this latest rant, he argued that some cultures can successfully integrate into Western European society, using the Vietnamese and Ukrainian populations of the Czech republic as examples.

Zeman, a 71 year old left winger and the first ever directly elected president of the Czech Republic, has repeatedly spoken out against the surge of migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe.